than those four quarto pages, not Augustine, not Luther, not Bunyan, not
Baxter, not Shepard has ever written anything of more evangelical depth,
and strength, and passion, and pathos. It is truly a splendid day's
work! But it might not have been possible even for Behmen to perform
that day's work had he not for months beforehand been dealing day and
night with the deepest and the most heart-searching things both of GOD
and man. What a man was Jacob Behmen, and chosen to what a service! At
work all that day in his solitary stall, and then all the night after
over his rush-light writing for a memorial to himself and to us his
incomparable _Compendium of Repentance_.

In a letter addressed to one of the nobility in Silesia, and dated
February 19, 1623, Behmen says: 'When you have leisure to study I shall
send you something still more deep, for I have written this whole autumn
and winter without ceasing.' And if he had written nothing else but his
great book entitled _Mysterium Magnum_ that autumn and winter, he must
have written night and day and done nothing else. Even in size the
_Mysterium_ is an immense piece of work. In the English edition it
occupies the whole of the third quarto volume of 507 pages; and then for
its matter it is a still more amazing production. To say that the
_Mysterium Magnum_ is a mystical and allegorical commentary upon the Book
of Genesis is to say nothing. Philo himself is a tyro and a timid
interpreter beside Jacob Behmen. 'Which things are an allegory,' says
the Apostle, after a passing reference to Sarah and Hagar and Isaac and
Ishmael; but if you would see actually every syllable of Genesis
allegorised, spiritualised, interpreted of CHRIST, and of the New
Testament, from the first verse of its first chapter to the last verse of
its last chapter, like the nobleman of Silesia, when you have leisure,
read Behmen's deep _Mysterium Magnum_. I would recommend the
enterprising and unconquerable student to make leisure so as to master